Help Audit The Fed

There are currently bills in both the House and the Senate to audit the Federal Reserve. It should work transparently, seeing as how it controls our money supply. I hope you support this idea. If so, please take the next 5 minutes and call your congress-people (or call the Congressional switchboard at 202-224-3121) and ask them to support this legislation and maybe even co-sponsor it.

The Federal Reserve has absolute control over our money supply. Whether or not it's good to have them as a central bank, there is no reason that they should be working in secret. (In fact, not too long ago they stopped publishing one of the measurements of our money supply, one which has been accounting for an increasing share of the total.)

There's also a petition you can fill out, which will be passed along. But your quick phone call will do even more to help.

And spread the word.

Peer-to-Peer Lending: an awesome idea being strangled by federal overreach

Yesterday I revisited one of my favorite examples of internet technology tackling important social issues: Prosper.com, who brings lenders and borrowers together. It's exciting because this is my favorite application of the internet; it brings people face-to-face with one another, and shares personal successes and failures. And besides the rewards of helping one another individually, it is a remarkable social invention that will allow for more and more transparency as we work with one another.

Unfortunately, I was surprised to find the following notice:

"We are not accepting new lender registrations or new commitments from existing lenders at this time."

Sure enough, securities regulators have found that their business must be registered and monitored. I'm extremely sad. Jim Bruene from NetBanker.com has already explained why this type of thing is bad, including more examples of how this really puts a damper on innovation. I, for one, hunger for the opportunity to work with individuals rather than institutions, and I'm willing to accept the risk (and rewards) involved. How did my national government get the power to forbid this kind of trade? Actually, Jim says that our federal legislators didn't directly cause this problem, but rather the SEC decided to classify these loans such that they're in trouble. This is typical; if Congress can delegate the power

I'm not good at tirades, so I'll end here. I'm just very, very sad that this is going on, and getting worse.

"Making Money While Going Green"

I've just listened to a podcast by Gary Hirshberg, founder of the environmentally-friendly yogurt producer Stonyfield Farms; this business is profitable while being committed to measurable, sustainable production, and this talk is remarkable because he is so enthusiastic and he gives so many details, both facts about how they run their business and stories about making such an endeavor successful. His book looks as interesting and informative as this talk, so I've got to get a copy!

Here are the facts I'd like to remember:

• Before Stonyfield he worked with New Alchemy, where he found we could support 10 people on 1/10 of an acre using solar power and no fossil fuels. (3:30 into podcast)
• Yoplait is about 14% net revenue bottom-line and Stonyfield is about 13%, but their gross margins are 10 points behind. (I don't know what those mean; must learn.) (6:45 into podcast)
• They have their own climate footprint methodology, and they look through their P&L to improve it and save money.
• For our sewage, we typically "dilute with enough water, add oxygen, [and] agitate"; they built an "anaerobic "facility to handle their waste and generate energy and they'll have a net payback of $4-5 million. (11:00 into podcast)
• With smarter sugar production, they have better soil, water quality, yields, worker health, and wildlife in the area, and now the cost of their sugar is equal to conventional sugar. (13:50 into podcast)
• Discussed how UPS saved $10 million (per year?) by only making right turns in their trucks.
• Great stories about advertising and building the business: building loyalty by adopting out cows and thanking and giving out free samples to commuters (18:00-21:00 into podcast)
• They have their own scoring, where they're only 63% but trying to do better... like IBM who is at 70%. (I'm guessing this is the Climate Counts campaign.) (26:40 into podcast)
• At birth, we have 287 chemicals in our blood, 188 of which are (or may be) carcinogenic.
  

Celebrating the two-month anniversary of our financial sector bailout with a status report

Today is the two-month anniversary of the huge emergency bailout that was absolutely critical to avoid imminent catastrophe. However, they have not even used half of it yet, and they have spent the first half mostly in places other than where promised. (And when I say "where promised", I mean "where the law directs".)

As much as I am disappointed by widespread support for government overreach, it is good to hear widespread applause when Cody Willard pointed out the flaws in this whole bailout mess. The best and most informative part is the 2 minutes from 3:30-5:30: "Last weekend we we sent more money to Citigroup, one company, than the entire budget for food stamps in this country every year." I've never heard of Cody before today, but it looks like he is worth watching: in a recent post, he points out how our current government "destroys the rule of law". Very true. And I hope that understanding is spreading.

This ad doesn't convince me that planned communities work.

This article includes a CDC video ad trying to make the case for planned communities. There's just one funny thing that's missing: the people. In any video snippet, there were never more than 4 people enjoying the benefits of these planned areas, and usually there were fewer. This is the whole problem with planned communities: what good are they if people don't use them because they prefer the benefits of purchasing houses in non-planned areas? (There's another article on the topic the next day, but it is made of analysis and references to analysis without any real examples of approaches that actually work.)

I believe there are ways to achieve what you're discussing, and I'd like to hear more, but you'll have to have a different approach than the typical urban planner mandates to get us there. There are bountiful studies and reasons why the traditional government approach doesn't work, so please overcome those obstacles in future attempts to convince me.

Effective Teaching

In this talk, Benjamin Zander doesn't just lecture about the abundance in life, he demonstrates it by teaching a young musician as we all watch. What a great example!

Learn lessons from the pirates

Matt Mason talks about piracy, how it's always going to be with us, and the best approach for everyone is to deal with it creatively and constructively. (It actually reminds me of the story about attitude heard in another talk: two shoe salesmen go to Africa, and the first despairs because nobody wears shoes while the second rejoices at the opportunity!)

He talks about how he was a "pirate DJ" in London, which sounds interesting, but then he discusses how things often start in the pirate network and then move to mainstream. When the "legal" players start to address the problems that create piracy, they become truly powerful and profitable. He uses "Heroes" as a great example of this: they're the most pirated show on the web, but they've made over $50 million on their alternative revenue streams. He also points to a pharmaceutical company Novartis who learned to do something about their piracy problems in Thailand by offering products for free. You cannot buy the kind of goodwill that comes from that type of positive action.

We really are in an age of abundance (at least in my industry), and the long-term successes will be those who learn to build organizational models that share that abundance rather than restrict it.